


The Meadow Grows Over

by starstag



Series: Tell Them of my Courage [1]
Category: 1917 (Movie 2019)
Genre: Alternate Ending, Fix-It, Healing, Hurt/Comfort, Injury, Injury Recovery, Platonic Love, Post-Canon, he's very badly concussed and that hand has GOT to be infected, love and friendship - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-07
Updated: 2020-02-07
Packaged: 2021-02-28 00:40:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,553
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22594924
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/starstag/pseuds/starstag
Summary: It's fine. Or at least, they'll eventually be fine. But healing takes time.
Relationships: Lance Corporal Schofield & Lance Corporal Blake
Series: Tell Them of my Courage [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1672087
Comments: 15
Kudos: 143





	The Meadow Grows Over

When William Schofield awoke, a hard surface was pressed into his back. Mud had dried to a thin crust across his skin and all the creases of his clothing, and the thick, damp smell of the river still curled in his nostrils. He blinked, struggling to focus on some imaginary point far away as his mind fell back into itself, slowly spiraling out of dreams too quickly forgotten. 

Grass, in the wind, hissed beside him and the field rolled away into the dark, whole and clean, unmarked by craters. The horizon line swam in his vision, dipping and weaving like the branches above his head. A tree, he remembered. He was seated up against a tree. It was late dusk, he thought. Or early dawn. Or something, but the sky had cleared of clouds to show a rich indigo expanse, yellowed around the edges. How long had he slept? A few hours to night fall, or a year and a half?

He’d only gone to sit for a moment, just a second, just to calm the pressing typhoon in his skull. Don’t dwell on it don’t dwell on it don’t dwell on it a little voice chanted in his head, but it only made the ache behind his eyes tighten, and he bowed his head forward until his chin hovered above his chest and squeezed his eyes shut.

Everything hurt. So hot he was shivering, he reached to tug at his collar, to loosen some of the confining clothes and the skin of dried mud, but when he moved his hand erupted with a hot, aching pain. An overwhelming agony filled his head, so much that his vision momentarily flickered to a fuzzy grey. So he sat perfectly still, and willed his eyes to slip closed again. He didn’t feel brave or relieved or accomplished, or really even sad. An all-encompassing emptiness filled the areas between the pain. He was just drained, that’s all there was to it. If he slept and ate and didn’t dwell on it, he’d be back on his feet in no time. 

The lie tasted sour in his mouth. Or was it just bile? Was the slick on his cheeks tears or water, muck or blood, his or someone else's?

His eyes hard drifted open, against his will. There were stars in the heavens, and the moved and spun. Pretty, he thought. Pretty. They were twirling, as alluring as the fire roaring in Ecoust, as enchanting as the flower petals, and he was crying again, even if he couldn’t hear it. 

He didn’t hear the footsteps or see the shadow fall over him, but it must have happened because suddenly Joseph Blake was crouched in front of him and he was too tired to feel surprised. He blinked, by way of greeting. A small part of his mind must have thought it would be appropriate to acknowledge his presence.

Joseph’s expression was at the crossroad between heartbroken and worried. Ah. He thought. Tom. Even thinking the name was like a knife in his own stomach.

“Schofield.” he said. “You can’t sit out here.”

“Mm.” He blinked again and shifted a half-inch to angle his gaze over Blake’s shoulder. “Alright.” he said absently, with no intention of moving.

The man moved to face him directly. “Come on, Schofield. Get up.” He got to his feet and offered a hand. Will stared past it and let his eyes slip shut. He was so hot it was near unbearable, and cradling his hand against his stomach was doing nothing to stem the pain. But worst of all was his head. 

“Schofield?” he heard Blake say, but it sounded far off. “Will?” There were hands on his shoulder, shaking him. His eyes fluttered open, glued on the twirling stars behind Joseph’s frantic face. “Will? Oh God, man.” He was holding him in the grass, looking at him, calling his name and many other things. The words drifted away on the wind and the stars spun, around and around in a great spiral, and he watched them until he knew no more.

Waking was worse than it was before, abrupt and sudden instead of the steady floating into consciousness. It was a sudden bump that jerked him from the relative peace of uneasy sleep. He was moving. Flat on his back, and a dark sky passed before his eyes, broken by the rolling sensation of the wind and a splattering of white stars. It was not water that carried him, he felt no gentle caress or turbulent pull, only the flat press of canvas and a wadded heap shoved beneath his aching skull. 

A stretcher.  
That rubbed him wrong, for some reason that he couldn’t quite place. He didn’t need medical attention, hadn’t he already said that? Hadn’t he? He made to sit and move, to say something, but all that came out was a garbled mumble. His limbs were leaden, as heavy as cast iron, and wouldn’t respond at all. 

For a brief moment, a fierce panic filled him, but the passage of the sky over his head stole his attention once more. There was no suffusing numbness that prevented movement: he could feel his limbs, they were just so heavy. A raw pain was building in his left hand, steadily as the seconds ticked by, until it was impossible to ignore. 

He floated through dreams and reality- it was incredibly hard to tell one from the other. The next thing that he could place as real with any certainty was blinking in confusion at the interior of a long tent in the casualty clearing center, wondering how he had gotten there. Other men were around him, in varying states of health and awareness, and it was dark enough that it was hard to clearly make any of them out. He paid them little mind, and trained his focus on the silhouette shapes of nurses and doctors moving about the far end of the tent, blurry and warped, duplicated by his broken vision. The effort pained him, and he at last lay his head back with a frustrated grunt, wondering how, why, he was there, why he’d been left discarded in a heap, like Tom. Tom had been left in a pasture, at least, not a dark tent filled with dying men.

It hurt most of all, having left him in the first place. Perhaps, if they’d left the barn, if he hadn’t gone to get water, if, if, if… He was crying again. In pain? His arm and head certainly hurt enough. What was he doing here? Tom had been stabbed. He hadn’t seen the knife enter his stomach, only the blood that came out. Had he been stabbed? Was he dying?

He was shaking through his own confusion, choking through it, when a nurse came and said something that he couldn’t quite understand, then it was all spiraling away again in a whirl of lantern light and water on his skin and warm hands moving his limbs when he wouldn't move them himself.

When he awoke he was wearing something different, and the memory of his uniform being taken was already hazy at best. So. He thought vaguely. Hospital it is. He did not feel relieved, and was instead left exhausted and confused. His skin was clean, if not painful in some areas. His hand ached and his throbbed with a vengeance, but when he cocked his head to look at it, the whole thing was swathed in a mess of white bandages. The cold shivers that wracked his body were not hard to place, and he didn’t have to think too hard to think where the fever might have come from. The memory was dulled and hard to place on a timeline, but he vividly remembered plunging his bleeding hand into a corpse. It was his head that was the worst, the pain was tight and persistent and impossible to ignore. 

It must have been mere minutes that he had lain awake, trying to gauge his situation, but he was tired already, and felt cold and achy all over. A fog dulled his mind and senses, and he blinked bewilderedly at his surroundings. As far as he could discern, it was the same tent as before the same rows of beds, the same soldiers sleeping or propped into sitting positions. There was a man sitting in a chair by his bedside. He was smiling and talking to himself. He looked like Tom, only older. When he saw Will blinking at him, he shifted forward and grinned and began speaking. Something about his worry for Will, and his thankfulness for his recovery and how was he feeling? Did he need anything?

The man must have seen his blatant confusion and the struggle as his face creased in concentration, for he hummed softly in acknowledgement and grew silent. Will could not remember the man’s name. It was in the back of his head, he knew it, but thinking too hard made his vision spin. He did know that looking at the man made him sad and disappointed and ashamed, and when he reached out and took ahold of Will’s hand, it wrenched all other thoughts from his mind save for a deep, encompassing sorrow.

Joseph. That was it. Joseph Blake. The brother he’d worked so desperately to find. The brother who looked and sounded so like Tom it hurt. 

They sat like that for a long moment until the soldier in the next bed over began speaking to him. The man sat up and held up a hand to silence him and then turned to the other soldier, speaking to him but turning back to glance at Will or gesture at him every few seconds. The soldier was listening intently, and others were leaning in as well. He didn’t bother to listen, and shut his eyes. 

“Will.” Somebody touched his shoulder, shaking it as if they had been trying to get his attention for several minutes. It was Joseph again, and he was leaning over Will, still smiling. He narrowed his eyes and tried to focus on each word as he spoke, but they came out fast and he lost track. “Tom” he heard, and “healing” and “coming” and “letter”.

Letter-that was important. He hadn’t written it yet, had he? Tom had wanted him to write to his mother. He needed paper and a pen and he needed it now. He said so, and repeated himself when Joseph looked like he didn’t understand. He shook his head again and again, and the smile drifted away to a look of sorrowful confusion. Gently, he shushed Will, who trailed off quietly despite the urgency growing in his mind. He turned and said something to the other men, then bent back over Will, patted his chest with a grin, said something about ‘being right back’ and departed promptly. The bed sprang back from where he had been leaning on the edge, and the movement jostled his arm and head.

He basked in the silence that followed, and let his eyes unfocus, staring at nothing.

Time passed. He couldn’t tell exactly how much, but the tone of the light was different when Joseph returned. He said something to Will that he didn’t quite listen to and then departed again, but the man that he had come with remained. He was dressed like a patient, back turned in conversation with a nurse while another one proved some support with an offered arm.

They were speaking to one another, and he struggled to make sense of any of the words, muffled and fast as they were. A grunt of frustration escaped his lips, and all four of them turned to regard him.

The patient turned last and looked and him with a smile and the world immediately froze.

Thomas Blake was standing over him. He looked hazy, as if viewed through a gauzy curtain, or as if he stood over flat ground on a particularly hot day. He couldn’t get his eyes to focus, no matter how he blinked and squinted, and he found that immensely frustrating. He huffed in annoyance, struggling against the tangle of sheets, and when he blinked again, Tom was gone and a nurse was standing over him, saying something he couldn’t quite make out, pressing him back with a persistent strength he couldn’t fight.

The days became one great stretch that blurred together in the haze of his clouded mind, and his sickness, and his pain. The doctor’s face, he knew. The nurses as well. He ate and slept, form what he could gather, and a whole cycle of people came by his bedside from morning to night. Unwrap the bandages on his hand, clean and dress, wrap it again, morning and evening, day after day, as the heat built and subsided in his body with the regularity of the tide and he sweated like a spring after snowmelt.

What dreams he did remember were fitfull and dark, a twisting labyrinth of an amalgamation of memories that woke him struggling and screaming with one of the nurse’s now-familiar voices in his ear and their hands on his shoulders. 

This particular night was no different: a confined and repetitious horror where nothing he did seemed to fix anything. He was moving too slow, unable to run, and when he looked down, the front of his body from waist to knees was crimson, drying black into the cloth. His breath froze in his lungs and he fell forward, desperate words rising in his throat.

He woke panting, pawing at his stomach, searching for blood. There was, of course, none, but he couldn’t shake the feeling of the thick, dark fluid flowing through his fingers as he struggled to staunch it.

“Lance Corporal Schofield!” He hadn’t seen the nurse arrived, but she was there, standing at the end of the bed, hands folded and smiling pleasantly. He jumped violently at the sudden address.

“What?” It came out strained, cracking halfway through, and he squinted at her.  
“Feeling any better?” It seemed a polite address more than anything else. He was cold and shaking and his head hurt. He told her so, though she seemed to already know. 

She leaned forward and spoke slowly and clearly, and he stared right through her, processing each word one by one.

“Haven’t seen your visitor?” She angled her head to the other side of the bed, and he followed her gaze, nearly falling backwards off the opposite edge when he saw.

A pair of bright eyes were regarding him, their owner seated on the floor resting their head on hands that lay folded on his sheets. “Hello.” He knew that voice. He knew that face, and he squinted in confusion, trying to place it, to blink it away. It wasn’t real, it couldn’t be, but it didn’t move or shift, and when he didn’t immediately answer the eyes narrowed and grew hurt. 

His aching head protested his struggling thoughts, and he swatted at the vision. “Go away. Let me sleep.” He growled.

“Will!” It was too real, it sounded too clear, and that hurt even more, and his efforts to chase away the wraith increased, or as much as he could, but when he extended his hand, it only met solid flesh, and not the open air of a hallucination.

In a confusion of exchanged words and shoves, a nurse arrived and drew the other figure away while another pressed him back, where he stared at the ceiling, tears pricking his eyes and making his vision dissolve into a foggy blur.

“Shh, now.” She was saying, though it wasn't to him. “It’s alright, he’s just confused. Got hit in the head pretty hard. You come away, now. Let the poor man rest.”

Wait. The thought hovered in his mind. If she can see him than he must be real, or the whole thing was a dream. A bright, impossible flare of hope exploded in his chest, and then he was asleep.

It was his hand that usually woke him, the throbbing pain built and built until he couldn't force his mind back down into sleep. In the night, he awoke, drenched in sweat. His head hurt and spun, but his mind was much clearer, clear enough to be uncomfortable and ashamed at his situation. He fidgeted and picked at the sticking cloth that clung to his damp form. 

He shifted and turned in the bed until all the sheets and pillows were spilled on the floor, and a nurse came and helped him change. Her lips were pursed in annoyance, and he was suddenly dismayed by his behavior and inability to help, but she said nothing to him and he was back in the bed before the sun rose, clean and far more clear-headed than he had been for days. 

Apart from a meal and a whispered conversation, the day passed unremarkably. The doctor peered over thick glasses at him and the exhausted nurse he’s seen before marked down things he didn’t bother to remember. Something about his hand, or his head.

Around noon, it must have been, he began to doze off, and was startled back to wakefulness by the scrape of a chair and the gentle sound of somebody clearing their throat.

Joseph was there. He was smiling again, and for a moment an awful pain took hold of Will’s heart. He looked too much like his brother when he smiled.

“Schofield.” He patted his shoulder. “I heard your fever broke. You’re looking much better.”

It took him a moment to process the words, but he understood them and they were clear and ungarbled in his head. “Much better, sir.” He said simply and his voice cracked when he spoke. “How long has it been?”

“Oh.” He scratched the back of his head in thought. “Oh, uh...four days? Four days now? Yes, that seems about right.”

“Only four?” It didn’t seem correct, but then again, he was the one with a head full of nettles and a mind like pea soup. 

“You look brighter, Schofield.” The man sat in the chair by his bedside. “I’m glad you’re back with us.”

He nodded and swallowed thickly, unable to answer honestly by agreeing or disagreeing. He settled for a noncommittal grunt. Plenty of times he’d used that on Tom, in the midst of one of his stories.

“I heard you got quite the bump on your head. Saw it, too.” He grimaced theatrically. “How’d you do that, now? That’s a story I’d like to hear.” The following smile was not as tight as Will seemed to remember. It was natural, easy. “Some other time, eh?”

He nodded, rubbed the back of his neck. It still hurt to the touch. “Maybe. When I can remember it all clearly.”

Joseph laughed at that. Threw his head back and laughed. “Some of him rub off on you?” He didn’t see how Will paled at that. “Well, that’s not why I came here. Just wanted to see if you were up to a visitor? Thought I’d ask you, this time.”

He gestured at the man. “Well, you’re here, aren’t you?”

That produced another chuckle. “Yes, well. You’re sure?” He nodded as Joseph stood. “I’ll go get him then.”

It couldn’t have been more than a few moments that he was gone, his progress followed by the curious gazes of a number of other soldiers, but to Will it felt like an eternity as he tried to make sense of his words. What did he mean?

When he spotted Joseph making his way back, he moved at a slow shuffle, accompanied by a slightly shorter man dressed in pyjamas and a robe. They were conversing quietly as he helped him along, and Will struggled to make out his features through the haze his brain had laid across his eyes.

The closer he got, the more he was sure he was hallucinating through the illness again, but no. The fever was gone, his hand far less painful, and hs head clearer than it had been in days.  
“Found him, finally.” Joseph chuckled when they reached his bed. Will was barely listening, staring at the apparition beside him. “Thought you’d be interested in seeing Tom, since you’re feeling a little better now.”

It was Tom, in the flesh, not a ghost or wraith or vengeful spirit. He was standing, just barley, and looked ready to topple over at the faintest wind or touch. His skin on his exposed forearms and face was shockingly pale, but he was smiling down at Will with a brightness that was almost painful for his aching head.

“Fancy seeing you here.” He said, before gasping as Will surged upward out of the bed and immediately fell forward.

It took Joseph and two other men to get him back in the bed, laying down but propped up by a heap of pillows. His mind was spinning, lightheaded and fuzzy, but that was of no importance. By the time they’d convinced him to remain seated,Tom was swaying where he stood and looking exceptionally ghostlike. Joseph hovered over him like a mother hen, wrapped a robe around his shoulders, and seated him in a chair.

“The two of you.” He sighed. “You’ll be the death of me, of each other. No wonder you made it. Such tenacity!” He nodded, and mumbled something awkward about having to go, drawing the curtain across as he left. If Will had watched him go, he would have seen a number of other men staring at him and Tom watching each other with such intensity it was if the other one would vanish if they looked away.

“Will Schofield.” Tom scooted the chair closer, and the spell was broken. He stared at Tom as he settled into the seat and leaned forward to place one hand on the bedside. His gaze roved from his face, thinner and paler than before, to his body. The youthful blush was gone, his hair was greasy and plastered to his scalp, and he held himself stiffly, as if one side caused him great pain. He could see the lump of bandages beneath his shirt, and could tell it wouldn’t be long before a nurse came hunting him down to go back to resting. Still, it was the same man as before, a little more battered, but not quite a week had passed, and it was Tom as he had always known him.

“Thomas Blake.” He said steadily, and his voice already had lost a little of the hoarseness. Hesitantly, as slowly as he dared, his good hand inched across the sheets towards Tom’s. The man said nothing, watching his progress, he at last shifted closer still. Will could hear his breathing.

Their hands met cautiously, a tentative brush. He was warm and solid: real, not a dream. Unbidden, a gasp rose in his throat, and he covered Tom’s hand with his own, gripping it as tightly as he dared.

“I’m here.” He whispered. “I’m here.”

They sat in silence for a long moment, reveling in the impossibility of it all, and at long last Will glanced up at Tom and they shared a look of deep understanding.

“You made it.” Tom said lightly.

“I did.” He nodded. It still didn’t feel quite real.

“I thought if anybody would get to my brother, it would be me. Thought we would get there together.” He swallowed hard. “Honestly, I thought when I was going that you would go back, that you didn’t...didn’t want to…”

“Hmm. Not much choice in the matter, when I thought you’d come back and haunt me.” He rubbed a circle into the back of his hand. “That was you, Tom, who pushed me. That was you. I couldn’t leave it, not when I thought-” He cleared his throat and blinked back a dampness in the corner of his eye. “I had to finish it, when you couldn’t.”

“Thank you.” Tom said, and the raw earnesty in his voice carried a gratitude that words could not.

They lapsed into silence, Tom’s warm hand resting beneath his, and it felt strange to sit beside him without speaking. It was pleasant, though, and he let himself bask in the reality of it without thinking of the past or the future.

It wasn’t long until the nurse returned and chased Tom back off, guiding him away to some distant part of the hospital. It was too far, too hard to watch him walk away until he was lost from view, but Will found he was too tired to protest. He kept glancing around, straining his vision for any sight, any movement awakening an expectation that he would be there.

A horrible thought occurred as he ate alone: if he was still sick, it could have all been a dream. It could have all been for nothing. So he sat in an anxious silence and kept a resolute watch on all the comings and goings until he fell into an awkward doze.

He woke slowly, peacefully, and was once again thankful for the absence of the fever. It wasn’t much, but he felt rested and the sleep had once again felt natural. His eyes drifted from the sheets and table, hazy in the dusky light, and fell on a shape waiting at the end of his bed.

Tom was back. They regarded each other in silence for a long moment. It still didn’t feel quite real to him, but when Tom broke into a grin and shuffled towards him, the spell seemed to break. It was just Tom, real and whole and ridiculously happy to see him. 

The sun had set almost completely, and many of the other soldiers were already asleep. The lamp at his bedside cast him in a warm, yellow light that gave the appearance of health to his pale face, but it was the grin that did the most. He looked so alive. 

“Hey, Scho.” A nod, in response. He got the distinct feeling that Tom was not supposed to be with him, only accentuated by the way he wrapped his robe tighter around his body and glanced over his shoulder.

“What are you doing here?” His voice, still so uncharastically rough and quiet, sounded like it came from another person, but Tom’s face lit up when he heard him speak.

“Can I sit there?” He nodded at the bedside where Will was resting his hand on the sheets. It was a thinly veiled request for comfort, one barely covered up by his casual smile. 

Will saw right through it. He blinked serenely. “Alright, then.”

“Thanks, mate.” He smiled that goofy, relieved smile and climbed up gingerly as Will shifted over. He watched Tom lay back out of the corner of his eye. It was a narrow bed, and left them pressed together from shoulder to hip, with Tom’s legs hanging off the side. “Not pushing you off, am I?”

He gave his head one small jerk to the right. “No, ‘s fine. You’re side alright?”

“Eh.” He shrugged awkwardly. “Must be better now, if they’re letting me walk around like this. Hurts a bit, though I dare say you were in a worse pinch for a minute there.” Tom’s body against his side was warm and heavy, perhaps too heavy, but he was alive and that mattered more than anything else.

“Hm?” He squinted at him.

Tom laughed, and it didn’t sound mocking at all. “Still to bright, old man? Here.” he reached over the edge of the bed, and a moment later the lantern light faded to a vague glow that outlined Tom’s hair like a halo. “Yeah, you were in rough shape for a bit. Hit your head, I heard. Pretty hard. And then you got real sick. I knew your hand wasn’t ‘nothing.’”

“It wasn’t important.” he groaned, but couldn’t help but curl into Tom’s side with a mumble. He felt his arm slide over his shoulder. 

The bed was so narrow, he was barley comfortable enough, and there was no way Tom was as well, but he sighed contentedly and made no effort to move. “But it’s important now, innit?”

He tucked the great club of his bandaged hand against his chest and glowered. “It wasn’t important then. Not like I could do anything about it. It’s only a little mark on my hand. You had to get a great big hole in your gut.” He gently jabbed a finger at the younger man’s stomach, which he easily batted away.

Tom laughed softly, stiffly, and quickly trailed to silence. “Yes, I did.” He perked up suddenly, and gently patted Will’s shoulder. “Makes for a good story though, doesn’t it? Though I think yours is better. Not like you’d tell anybody, though.”

He shut his eyes briefly and huffed in agreement. “My thoughts exactly.”

“You will have to tell me what happened though.” He felt a gentle prod in his ribs and swatted it away with his good hand.

“Not now, you’ll hear it when I can keep a thought straight for longer than a minute.”

There was a pause, filled by the gentle sounds of other men and nurses moving about the interior of the tent. He felt the mattress shift as Tom moved, and opened his eyes just in time for him to speak again. “But you will tell me, won’t you?”

It was just sincerely worried enough that he smiled rather than rolling his eyes. “Yes.” He said. “Now be quiet or move to your own bunk.”

“I’ll be quiet.” Tom grumbled to himself. “I can be quiet.”

“Well, then show me.” he shut his eyes again. “And turn off the lamp.”

The light flicked off and left him in darkness and relative silence. The rise and fall of Tom’s chest pressed against his side, the steady in and out of his breathing was a comforting noise.

“Will?”

“Yes?” He opened his eyes to the darkness of the tent, lit by small pools of lantern light. Will was a dark lump in his bed, almost on top of him, and he found the presence was comforting.

“I’m sorry.” His voice was different, a harsh whisper that wobbled. The young man was crying.

Turning onto his side with a grunt, he lay so they shared the bed equally, facing each other. His bandaged hand resting between them, he placed his other arm gently over Tom’s side. The man was shaking, and in the dark he could make out his screwed-up expression and the sparkling of tears in his eyes. 

“Why?” He whispered. “Whatever for?”

“I-” he sniffled. “I couldn’t do it, I got stabbed, and that’s the worst I think, not even a good way to go.” He was rambling, even as Will tried to quiet him with whispers and a steady hand on his side. “I’m sorry, I shouldn't have chosen you, I thought it was easy, and it should have been me, but then you had to go on and I saw you when you came in and it looked bad. It should have been me, I’m sorry, I’m sor-”

“Tom!” It was, perhaps, spoken more sharply than it should have been, but it got his attention. “Tom, what are you talking about?”

“I’m sorry. It didn’t work out right.”

With a sigh, he moved his hand up to rest gently on the back of Tom’s neck. “Has any of this gone the way we want it to? We weren't supposed to succeed, and we did.”

“You did.” he grumbled sullenly. “What a use I was, for dragging you all the way out there.”

He shut his eyes briefly, collecting patience and sighed again. His fingers found Tom’s hair and tangled themselves in it. “No, no. We did it. You don’t know, Tom. You don’t know what happened to me after you, well, after I thought you died.”

“Oh.” his shaking stilled and he was silent for a moment. “Will you tell me?”

Another sigh. He inched closer, pulling Tom into an embrace, the younger man burying his face into his shoulder. “In time. I don’t think the mission was ever meant to work. Can’t you be happy it did?” Biting back his own tears, he pressed a closed-mouth kiss to his cool forehead. “Can’t you be happy that we’re alive? Is that enough, or do you need a medal?”

That produced a rough laugh. “I can’t help but think you just want to take mine and sell it for more wine.”

“Oh, shut up.” He dug his hand into his hair, but neither his words nor his grip had any bite to them.

Tom pulled back briefly, his eyes shining, face contoured in faint golden light. “I am happy, Will. I’m happy you’re here with me.”

A lump swelled in his throat, and he nodded, blinking rapidly against tears. “I am too, Tom. I am too.” In the silence that followed, they stared at each other until they both broke into a helpless laughter and curled into one another, the bed a tangle of sheets and limbs and an innocent joy.

“Go to sleep, Tom.” Will whispered, and was met by silence. The young man across from him already was.


End file.
